


a delicate and jagged script

by Loxare



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Other mentioned characters include:, Raven Queen - Freeform, Soulmark AU, taako - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:28:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26523703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loxare/pseuds/Loxare
Summary: Kravitz doesn't have a soulmark. For the first few centuries of his existence, that had been a fact of his life.And then, suddenly, he does.
Relationships: Kravitz/Taako (The Adventure Zone)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 95





	a delicate and jagged script

Soulmarks came in four colours. Red for romantic love, blue for platonic love, purple for a mix of both, and black for... when there wasn't a soulmate, not anymore. Everyone knew this. Just like everyone knew that soulmarks first appeared when your soulmate was born and grew as your soulmate did, until they spelled the first sentence your soulmate would say to you, written in your soulmate's hand and wreathed in symbols of importance to your relationship. 

Kravitz was one of many born without a soulmark, and one of very few who did not develop one as he grew. When he died, his skin was blank. When the Raven Queen took him in, his skin was blank. For hundreds of years, he did his work, reaped escaped souls, punished those who upset the balance of life and death. 

For a decade or two, he checked, every once in a while, for marks. He gave up on that relatively quickly though. Surely if he had a soulmate, they would have been born during his natural lifespan. 

And so, it wasn't until several hundred years into his service as the Raven Queen's best Reaper that he stepped out of the shower and noticed something on his back, reflected in the foggy mirror. Something white. He frowned, rubbing at the spot with his towel, thinking he'd missed a bit of soap. But the patch of white stayed. And when he rubbed a hand over it, his skin felt like it always did. 

He finished dressing, then headed into his front room. It had the only other mirror in his apartment - he used it to make sure his cloak was even before leaving for work - and importantly, it wasn't currently fogged up. Then he pulled up his shirt.

There, in the small of his back, were words. Written in a quick and jagged, yet delicate, hand, were the words, "Hail and," with a small star beside the H and a raven above the second a.

This was shocking for a number of reasons. Firstly, he was hundreds of years old. He didn't even really remember how old he was, although he could probably ask the Raven Queen if he wanted an exact number. Or HR. And his soulmate had been born long after he should have died? Hell, his soulmate had been born long after he _had_ died. 

Secondly, his soulmark was two words and two symbols large. Which meant it had been there for a long while. His soulmate could have been born a decade ago and he hadn't noticed. He was the top Reaper in the Raven Queen's employ. He could spot the smallest shred of necromantic energy at a hundred paces. And he hadn't noticed a soulmark growing on his back for possibly a decade. Maybe more.

Finally. Well, it was white. And white soulmarks did not exist. It was not one of the four colours. And that, more than anything else he had seen and heard in his centuries of life and unlife, worried him.

And it worried him for decades. There wasn't really anyone to ask about it. The Raven Queen might know more, but she was his boss. And if Kravitz told her he had a soulmate, she would never leave it be. It wouldn't surprise him if she put a bounty on his soulmate just so she could meet them.

He documented what he could, just in case. Took a few photos. Took many photos when the sentence finally completed itself.

_Hail and well met._

Which was, unfortunately, not an uncommon greeting.

When he was skeletal, the words were still there, traced in letters that were barely visible against the off white of his spine. They were much smaller so they could fit in the limited space, but they were there.

Kravitz threw himself into his work. Even if he did have a soulmate, and the oddness of the colour didn't fill him with confidence on that, what sort of match would he be? He was a dead, workaholic, quasi-immortal bounty hunter for the queen of death. He turned into a skeleton on the regular. Whoever his possible soulmate was, they deserved better.

(He ignored the part of him that said that wasn't the point. It was the opposite of the point, in fact. Whoever his soulmate was deserved him, exactly him, just as he deserved them.)

Over a century passed, and he gained more ravens and stars and moons and oddly ornate circles and, concerningly, tentacles. Kravitz checked every couple of years, just to take note of the differences. A hundred and twenty years and Kravitz concluded that his soulmate was one of the longer lives races.

It was while he was taking out yet another cabal of necromancers that he felt a horrible, sharp pain in his back, causing him to stumble and giving one of the necromancers an opening to flee. He dealt with the ones he had in front of him, then portaled after the one who had run. And then, once his work was done, Kravitz went home. Proper protocol meant that he should fill out the paper work first, but he couldn't. Not yet. He raced to his bathroom, tossing his cloak onto his bed as he passed. He tugged up his shirt and twisted so he could see and -

Written in jagged black script. With black symbols. _Hail and well met._

Kravitz sank to the floor. His soulmate was dead.

Could he mourn someone he had never met? Could he grieve a possibility, one he wasn't sure he wanted? 

Kravitz gave himself ten minutes. Then he picked himself up. He had to deal with the paper work, and putting the necromancers' belongings in impound. He had to prepare for his next bounty.

Perhaps later, he would find time to grieve.

Except later never came. A year later Kravitz was once again coming out of the shower and saw a flash of white. It was then that he noticed that the slow aching pain that had been with him since his soulmark had turned black was gone. And he felt anger.

This was his soulmate? This was who he was meant to be with? Someone who flouted the Raven Queen's laws, who went against everything that Kravitz believed? No. He didn't care who was at the end of this. He wanted nothing to do with them. Not a thing.

Over the next few decades, Kravitz would occasionally be assaulted with horrible, stabbing pain in his back, followed by some amount of time of slow, dull ache. But it was always less than a year. The same day, every year, a few weeks before Mid-Summer, it would stop. May 7.

There was nothing ritually significant about that day. Nothing at all, or at least nothing Kravitz could find. It wasn't significant to the lunar cycle, and it wasn't a solstice or equinox. The date and month numbers didn't add up into a magically powerful number. It was probably the most boring day to ever occur in late spring. And yet, eight different times, _eight times_ , at 9am on May 7th, his soulmark faded from black back to white. 

It is on a year when his soulmate hadn't died. Kravitz wasn't sure whether to be pleased about that or not. He wasn't sure what to think about it at all. Maybe black meant something different to this weird soulmark. White was unheard of, after all. He wasn't really treading familiar territory. On May 7th, before he headed in to work, he was examining his soulmark. It had changed again, as soulmarks tended to do. Now, besides the usual symbols delicately framing the words, there was a scythe, a skull, a hat and a vase.

Gently, he touched the first line. And pulled his hand away as if burned.

Where he had touched it, the letters had turned red. Swiftly, the colour spread, until his entire soulmark was a deep crimson.

Red. He had a red soulmark. Quickly, Kravitz tripped into his room and grabbed for his pictures. White in the pictures, red on his skin.

Red. It was red.

Red was the colour for romance. A romantic soulmate.

A romantic soulmate who, for all Kravitz knew, had died eight times.

Enough was enough. He had spent nearly two and a half centuries worrying about this. If his soulmate was real, then he would meet them eventually. Whatever had happened that had decided that his soulmate was going to be a romantic partner, well, he would find out if he ever met his soulmate. 

And...

If his soulmate was a death criminal, he wanted nothing to do with them.

Twelve years later, on Candlenights, he would get the shock of his life when the elf in the containment suit spoke. He had seen the bounty, but somehow, somehow, he hadn't put the pieces together.

And then Taako, of Hail and well met fame, wrapped him up in Evaard's Black Tentacles.

And then, after winning their freedom in a card game, after promising they wouldn't do it again, after breaking that promise, Kravitz couldn't help but want to be near Taako. He was disappointed but not angry. He wanted to understand.

It wasn't until after their conversation when Kravitz was standing in his apartment, trying to find a good place to display his vase that it hit him. It wasn't even a very good vase. But he couldn't look at it and not think about Taako's hands on his, chest pressed against his back, helping him to shape it, and that wasn't the kind of memory that someone left in the back of a cupboard to gather dust, and-

Uh oh.

Later, the Raven Queen would smile knowingly at him, while Kravitz burned with embarrassment. He had only known Taako for a few months. They'd only spoken three times. How could he be in this deep already? But She smiled and changed the law, so the loophole Kravitz had exploited would be a loophole no longer.

And then She said, "If you do not invite him over for dinner, his bounty goes live again."

Which is why he hadn't told her in the first place.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't usually write romance, but this has been in my head for a while


End file.
